The PN has filed a motion in an attempt to let the administrative council elections go ahead as originally planned in May.

A legal notice had indefinitely postponed the elections, scheduled to take place on May 25, 2019, concurrently with local council and European Parliament election

Administrative committees are responsible for hamlets such as Burmarrad and Swatar, which fall under the responsibilities of other local councils.

Opposition MP Robert Cutajar filed the motion, which argued that administrative committees were an integral part of the devolution of powers and were essential for subsidiarity.

Read: Goodbye, administrative committees? Local council reform proposals unveiled

He and other MPs from the Opposition benches argued that the Labour Party had cancelled the elections because it could not find candidates to contest them.
However, Labour MP Alex Muscat insisted the Opposition was misrepresenting the legal notice.

Only 33 per cent of those eligible had turned out to vote in elections for administrative committees, and some hamlets - such as Bidnija - had not been granted an administrative council.

Dr Muscat said reforms would bind mayors to appoint a local councillor to tend to the affairs of each respective hamlet, leading the administrative committees and representing them with his or her vote on the local council. This would allow a single individual to be identified as the point of contact for each particular hamlet.

Opposition MP Chris Said said that only 16 hamlets had been identified in the original law, and that others could easily have been added by the government. He pointed out that this was the second time that the Labour Government was postponing elections, referring to the postponement of local council elections to coincide with this year’s MEP elections.

He claimed that the intention was ultimately to do away with administrative committees altogether.